by Hugh Howey
Carlton took Zola up to scavenge more items from her room, which left her in tears once again. There was little to be done to keep the wind and rain out of the room. Carlton grabbed a hammer to beat back some exposed nails where broken bits of roof truss poked down through the shattered sheetrock, just to keep anyone from running into them. Daniel felt like they were all searching desperately for something to do, for some way to burn energy, to beat back the storm, or to save their house and possessions. They had spent nearly a full day cowering and helpless, and now it felt recuperative to do anything at all.
The mood lasted until the sun began to set, which seemed to happen suddenly for summertime; the clouds to the West once again gobbled up the remaining daylight prematurely. The wind continued to blow outside, though abating somewhat each hour. If felt like they’d always lived with it, this new wind. It blew as they ate another meal of soup, the fuel canister on the Coleman sputtering as it emptied. It blew as they congregated back by the hallway to drag blankets and pillows out into more space. The four of them ended up in the master bedroom, which had remained dry. It wasn’t so much for safety—the house seemed to have survived and would not get worse—it was more for comfort. It was to be near each other as Daniel and Zola curled up on the floor and their mom and stepdad took to the bed. The wind continued to blow as they fell into another long, dark, and fitful sleep, the house creaking with aftershocks as the family slumbered.
16
Daniel was the first to wake the next morning. His mouth felt full of cotton; his head pounded from getting too much sleep. He extricated himself from the knotted tangle of sheets and covers and padded softly across the carpet, out of his mom’s bedroom, and through the house.
The quiet outside was unfamiliar and haunting. Once again, the birdsongs were notably absent. The house had also become lifeless. In the perfect stillness, Daniel realized how much residual buzzing he was used to hearing. The refrigerator normally hummed, but he didn’t know that until he heard it not humming. The compressor usually clicked now and then, but it hadn’t for over a day. There was nobody on the family computer; its whirring fans had fallen silent as well. The living room TV was peculiarly quiet. Normally, at all times of day, someone was vying for control of it.
Daniel padded upstairs and changed into a pair of shorts that were already stained from an art class project. He grabbed fresh socks and changed into a new t-shirt, then rummaged through his bedside table for his cheapo digital camera. Back downstairs, he grabbed his shoes by the front door and slid them on. He let himself out into the motionless air and heavy calm of Hurricane Anna’s wake.
Even though the sun was just coming up, the sky was already bright blue to the east. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, almost as if the storm had swept them all up and dragged them off toward Columbia and North Carolina.
Daniel made his way into the front yard and studied the massive tree propped up against the house. The shingled roof was dented in around the trunk of the tree, the flat plane punctured and demolished. He worked his way through the tangle of branches from another fallen tree to admire the peeled-up root ball of the old giant oak. A wall of soil stood up from the yard, held together by the tree’s tangle of roots. Where they had been pried up from the earth, a deep depression lay full of several inches of Anna’s rain. The void of the missing roots formed a massive bowl, like a giant spoon had descended from the heavens and taken a bite out of their front yard. Daniel fished his inexpensive digital camera out of his pocket and took a picture of the mud-caked wall of roots, marveling at the way the ends had been torn from the violent ripping of the tree’s demise. He took a picture of the tree resting against the house, the missing dormer making it appear as if the façade were winking at him. As he panned the camera to take one of the littered yard, he noticed movement in the house. His mom opened the front door and looked out at him, shielding her eyes with a crisp salute.
“I’m gonna look around the neighborhood,” Daniel said, his voice sounding much too loud in the post-storm calm.
“Don’t go too far,” his mother said. “And be back before lunch.”
Daniel waved his consent and turned the camera off to conserve the battery. It was already low, and he realized how poorly he’d planned for the storm. His cell phone, his Zune, his camera, and who knew what else was inadequately charged. As much as Daniel mocked others for being reliant on their gizmos and for having far too many of them, he felt his own connection to that digital pipeline now that it had been ruptured.
The driveway was almost completely free of downed trees, but was lined on either side with crashed and crushed limbs. The long arms of the oaks sagged broken on the ground. The magnolia leaves, waxy and bright green, were tangled everywhere. Daniel strolled past them to the middle of the cul-de-sac and turned to marvel at the destruction. The white and yellowing flash of tree-wound was everywhere visible through the mangled canopy of woods. Each spot of raw and splintered yellow highlighted another limb broken, another trunk snapped in two, another tree destroyed or crippled. And the undergrowth was now a tall field of oddly green branches and bushy leaves. It looked like a blind barber had descended on the neighborhood with a gigantic set of clippers, buzzing the trees at random, making a mess of everything.
Through the tangles, Daniel could see more rootballs standing up on end like walls of caked mud. Each one had a large tree attached, the trunk resting along the ground and terminating on a jumbled cauliflower of leaves. Somehow, the trees were larger at rest than they had seemed pointing up at the wide sky. Daniel took a picture of one downed tree that had clipped a neighboring tree, slicing it pretty much in half. He saw lots of smaller trees that had fallen, only to be caught in the crook of another tree’s arms. These angled trunks stood out everywhere once he looked for them. He powered his camera off and heard a screen door slap shut somewhere. Through the new jungle, he could see the neighbors from across the cul-de-sac walking across their front yard to survey the damage to their own house. Daniel waved when they spotted him. He didn’t recognize either one of them and didn’t know their names.
He turned away from the heavily wooded cul-de-sac and wandered up the street, fighting the urge to take pictures of everything. Two houses down, the lone tree in an otherwise cleared yard had fallen against a neighbor’s house. The thick trunk hadn’t made a direct hit, but the massive kraken of limbs had ensnared the house. The gutters hung like a twisted, glittering tassel from the edge of the roof. The front door was completely hemmed in from the crash. Daniel hoped the back door was obstruction free, or the occupants were going to be climbing out windows.
Several of the houses he passed stirred with the same sort of early-morning activity: People standing outside in pajamas, some of them clutching steaming mugs, all sporting bewildered eyes. They waved at Daniel and each other, and he marveled at how few of his neighbors he recognized. Somewhere in the distance he heard a chainsaw buzz to life, the throttle worked over and over as it revved up and down with the cough of a machine long asleep. Daniel welcomed this intrusion into the quiet. It was the sound of a thing working and of progress being made. Somewhere, a piece of the littered ground was being cleared. When he looked out at all the incredible damage, he wondered if it would be months or even years before they had a handle on it all.
“Hey you.”
Daniel whirled around and looked for the person calling out.
“Over here.”
Someone by the bushes of the next house was waving at him. Daniel turned and walked toward the house. He noticed a huge swath of shingles had been ripped from the roof, leaving the black tar paper underneath torn, a layer of raw plywood exposed beneath that. The person by the bushes waved him over hurriedly. Daniel broke into a jog, wondering if someone was hurt. When he got closer, he saw the person was kneeling down by a solar panel, an open toolbox by her feet. It was difficult to peg the girl’s age. She had her hair tied back and covered with a red bandana; her face was plain and young-looking with no make
up.
“Can you hold something for me?”
Daniel shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”
He bent down and studied what she was doing. She immediately went back to work, not bothering to introduce herself. Daniel found the behavior odd and somehow intriguing.
“There’s not enough wire to twist together, so I need you to hold it while I solder them.” She pointed to the two pieces of wire, one of them sticking out of the base of the solar panel, the other coming from a stripped wire that led to a small black box.
“Okay,” Daniel said. “I’m Daniel, by the way.”
“That’s awesome,” she said. “Just hold that one right there so it overlaps with the bit of wire coming out of the red part.”
“What’re you fixing?” Daniel grabbed the one wire and held it close to the small piece of wire coming out of the solar panel. Tracing the severed cord leading away from the panel, he saw that it headed out toward a row of landscaping lights scattered among the bushes and aimed back at the house. He wondered why it would be urgent to get the mood lighting going in the middle of the morning, right after a major storm.
“I’m not fixing anything,” the girl said. “I’m making something.” She held up a small wand-like device that had a butane cartridge shoved in one end. The thing hissed, and smoke curled from the tip. With her other hand, she held a coil of silver wire, one end of it straightened and sticking out like an index finger from a fist. She dabbed the smoking tip of the wand against the coil of wire and some of it melted and coated the end of the device. She then bent close to the solar panel and touched the wand and the wire to the connection Daniel was making. With a few deft touches—her hands were much more still and confident than Daniel’s—the joint was made solid, a bright touch of solder reflecting the morning light before it cooled and lost its sheen.
“See if that’s gonna hold.”
Daniel tugged the wires, and they held fast.
“One more,” she said, pointing to another pair that had been stripped back. Daniel was sad there was only one more to do.
“What exactly are you making?” he asked.
“A very weak power station. I think.” She smiled up at him before leaning close and coating the wires with another neat connection. Daniel waited for the solder to dull as before, then tested it.
“You’re good with that.”
“My dad’s into radios,” she said, as if that explained how she had become proficient as well. She twisted a knob on the soldering iron and set it on a stand propped up in the grass. She pulled out a roll of black electrical tape and began covering the new connections with tight coils. “My name’s Anna, by the way.” She smirked up at him. “I’m thinking of changing it.”
Daniel laughed. “Yeah, that’s not gonna be the most popular of names for a while.” He rested back on his heels and watched her work. “What’s your middle name?”
“Florence.”
She laughed, and Daniel joined in.
“That’s no good either,” he said.
“I know, right? That’s a name I’m keeping in the wings until I’m seventy or something.”
“Definitely a name to grow into.”
She put the tape away and moved to the small black box. After adjusting a knob on it, she flicked a switch and a dim red light glowed. She pulled a multimeter from the toolbox and unwrapped the pair of red and black wires from around it.
“What’s this gonna do?” Daniel asked. He couldn’t see the solar panel running anything huge, like a fridge or a coffee maker.
“The panel puts out twelve volts for the lights,” the girl said. “There’s a voltage regulator and a battery in that box mounted below—the one with the wires.” She pointed with one of the leads from the multimeter to the new connections they’d made. “This is an inverter my dad uses in his car. It plugs into a cigarette adapter and puts out one hundred twenty volts like a normal outlet, just not as much juice.” She bent over one of the small outlets in the black box and inserted the two long, needle-like leads from the multimeter, each one into either of the two slots. “This thing is used to getting nine volts, and now it’s getting twelve. Now I need to see exactly how much we’re getting out of it in AC.”
Daniel smiled. He looked across the street as a couple started dragging limbs from one unnatural pile and placed them in one they had decided made more sense.
“One hundred twelve,” Anna said. She sniffed. “That’s plenty.” She turned a knob on the multimeter with several loud clicks. “Now to see how many amps.” She frowned at the LCD readout as it flicked with numbers. “Not bad,” she said. “Enough to charge a cellphone or a laptop.”
Daniel beamed. “That’s brilliant,” he said. “What’re you hoping to charge with it?”
Anna looked up at him, a lopsided frown of confusion on her face. “Whatever needs charging,” she said.
“I know, but what did you have in mind to wanna get up and do this first thing in the morning? A radio?”
She laughed. “No. Actually, we have one of those hand-cranked kinds. No, I didn’t make this for anything I’ve got. They’re saying we could be at least a week, maybe more, without power. This’ll be for whoever needs it.” She pointed toward the end of the driveway. “I’ll put up a sign in a little bit to let people know it’s ready.”
“How much?” Daniel asked.
She tucked a loose wisp of hair, so fine Daniel couldn’t tell what color it was, behind her ear. “What do you mean? You mean money?” She frowned. “I can’t charge for this.”
Daniel felt like an ass. He rubbed his hand over his camera, which was low on juice. He’d been asking in order to offer something in exchange for the charge. It had come out like he was accusing, or even encouraging her for gouging people in a time of need, rather than offering them a service.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said feebly.
“Yeah,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “Anyway, thanks for your help. Hope I didn’t use up too much of your time.” She rubbed her hands on the seat of her pants. “In exchange for your services, I can let you use this anytime you like.” She smirked at him.
“Thanks,” Daniel said. He looked up as a man exited the front door with a folded blue tarp in his hands. “I guess I’ll go.”
“Anna?” The man peered down the driveway.
“Over here, Dad.” She waved at him, but looked over her shoulder to smile at Daniel.
“There you are. Whatcha working on?”
Daniel walked down the driveway as she repeated her explanation of the gizmo. Somehow, the fact that she’d done the project without telling her father added to the allure. As Daniel walked slowly toward the next house, he glanced continuously over his shoulder at the two of them, bent down over the solar panel sticking out from the bushes. Instead of continuing his planned walk to the end of the neighborhood and out to the main road, he circled around Anna’s house, noting the damage to the shingles, the fruit tree toppled in the back yard, the tall radio tower tangled with limbs. As he wandered back toward his own house, walking slowly by hers, he saw a ladder up against the gutters, Anna and her father scrambling up the roof on a different ladder hooked over the peak, a blue tarp unfolding between them.
Who in the world was this Anna girl that lived four houses down from him?
17
Daniel returned home to find the cleanup around his house already underway. His mom and Carlton were dragging a massive limb down the driveway as he rounded the mailbox. There was already a small pile along their edge of the cul-de-sac.
“There’s some oatmeal left,” his mom said. “Probably still warm.”
Daniel nodded. “I’ll be right out to help.”
He waved to his sister, who waved back, a too-large leather glove flopping on her hand. She bit her lip and went back to wrestling a small limb, trying to extricate it from a labyrinthine tangle of a dozen mangled trees.
“I’ll be right back,” he called to her. As he considered the amount
of work ahead of him, he couldn’t help but feel a tinge of anger toward Hunter. His older brother always seemed to weasel out of laborious tasks. Daniel imagined him sleeping late with his girlfriend, her parents actually out of town, their power miraculously working, a hot tub bubbling under its insulated cover as it waited patiently for long days of lounging, soaking, and doing nothing.